Now, we all realize that our jump off point is agreeing to rally the troops for next quarter so we can circle back to the perfect ROI for the inevitable year-end come-to-Jesus moment. That’s evident from our low-hanging fruit research and the blue-sky white papers presented by the team in marketing, right? NO, YOU’RE WRONG ON THAT, STEVE. STEVE. STEVE. HEAR ME OUT. YOU’RE WRONG. JUST HEAR ME OUT, STEVE.

Last week, the college sent out an e-mail to all faculty and students saying that attendance to today's convocation was mandatory -- all students and faculty must attend. One of my colleagues told me, "The speaker must be donating a lot of money to the school, if they're making attendance mandatory for both students and faculty." As it turns out, she was absolutely correct.

So, what was the speaker's speech about? Basically, she spent an hour or so telling us that a.) being rich is good, and that the rich are to be admired and respected, b.) you aren't truly "successful" in life unless you're rich, c.)anyone can become rich, and if you don't become successful rich, then it's because you aren't working hard enough, and d.) the only people who fail are those who give up trying.

Gods, I am so sick of hearing rich people insist that poor people are only poor because they're lazy and/or lacking in gumption.

And the gall of telling a bunch of kids -- most of whom are the sons & daughters (or the grandsons & granddaughters) of coal miners that their families are poor because they didn't work hard enough.

And yes, she said -- word-for-word -- that "The only people who fail [where she had repeated defined "success" as "being rich"] are those who give up trying." Gah! By the end of it, I was nearly sick.

[Did I mention how very many times during her speech she reminded us that she was giving money to the college, and that we should admire her and feel grateful to her for doing so? Did I mention how she talked about how terrible taxation is, and how government does nothing but "waste" taxpayers' hard-earned money? "Yeah, on things like schools and roads and other such things that poor folks like us kind of need," I grumbled to a colleague. Did I mention that she insisted that rich people are only rich because they worked hard and earned their money, and how terrible it is, therefore, that they're so "discriminated against" in our society?]

It's worth pointing out that she herself mentioned several lucky breaks and coincidences that occurred during her life, which allowed her to "earn" her fortune -- not least of which was marrying a man who happened to have quite a bit of money. Kinda puts the lie to her claim of being entirely self-made, that her fortune was due entirely to hard work on her part, and that anyone could get rich by following her simplistic simple advice.

Afterwards, one of my colleagues said, "Next time, they're inviting Gordon Gekko to give the convocation address." Heck, he might actually have been an improvement.

__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”

Yeah, it's brilliant in its simplicity: If you can convince the poor that they're poor because they deserve to be poor -- that their poverty is evidence of some moral failing on their part -- then they'll be less inclined to revolt against a system which is very deliberately designed to ensure that the rich remain rich and that the poor remain poor.

__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

When I'm annoyed that people are using a word or phrase with a different meaning to the *correct one, I've given up trying to put them right, but I make a token invisible protest by not using that word or phrase myself, neither in its *correct usage nor the new *wrong usage.

One that bothered me for a while was "begs the question" - but I'm over that now.

*correct - the way I used that word or phrase - and I make efforts to check that this was the mainstream accepted usage until idiots started to use it differently.

Yeah, I don't correct people. I just come here to passive aggressively complain about it.

It does still bug me, though. Not because of prescriptivism so much as that, when enough people use precise terms for more generalized concepts, we all end up losing the precise term. Like if you now want to say something is begging the question, you have to also define the term if you want people to know what you mean.